


all that is gold does not glitter

by tciddaemina



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Blood, Emotional Turmoil, Minor Violence, Pre-Relationship, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-10 17:13:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15296238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tciddaemina/pseuds/tciddaemina
Summary: Daud waited for in him the dark of the warehouse, the rest of his Whalers nowhere to be seen. He'd stood there in his battered red coat, half-hidden in the flickering shadows of the whale oil lamps, and when he'd raised his sword Corvo had thought finally.





	all that is gold does not glitter

Corvo had thought about this moment a lot. He'd thought about it Coldridge, as the Overseer's did their best to break him to their will, screaming and crying and dying by inches but all the while sticking hard and firm, proclaiming his innocence again and again. He'd thought about it as he scraped and clawed and _crawled_ his way out of the darkness, limping from one nightmare to another, barely waiting for long enough for his wounds to stop bleeding before he was off again - killing, fighting, stealing, spying, bribing, threatening, begging- All of it for Jessamine, for Emily.

He would clear his name, avenge Jessamine, and save Emily from whatever fate the usurpers had decided for her, even if it meant sinking into the pits of hell to do it.

And now, almost a year later: Daud. The Knife of Dunwall, the assassin, _Jessamines murderer_. Corvo didn't know quite what he'd expected. A fight to the death, insults and taunts brandied about like daggers thrown - a little bit melodramatic, maybe, but whatever it had been, it hadn't been this.

Daud waited for in him the dark of the warehouse, the rest of his Whalers nowhere to be seen. He'd stood there in his battered red coat, half-hidden in the flickering shadows of the whale oil lamps, and when he'd raised his sword Corvo had thought _finally_.

Daud was an exceptional swordsman, quick and unpredictable, with enough strength to send Corvo staggering back a step each time he blocked a blow straight on. His mark flared in the dim of the warehouse, small bursts of sickly yellow that cast his scarred face in a grim light every time he Blinked or slowed time. The fight was vicious, brutal, fought in the moment between seconds and in savage attacks, so fast and brutal they toed the line of reckless abandon.

And yet...

Corvo was winning. That was good, great even. He'd promised Emily he would come back, had sworn it to her on Jessamine's grave, but deep down he'd known that the odds were against him. Corvo had trained for years, was a renowned swordsman in his own right, even before the mark, but Daud was better. The Knife of Dunwall, the best assassin in all the Isle's, the widow's bane, rumored to have slit a thousand throats...

But Corvo was winning, and easily at that. Daud fought better than any man Corvo had ever seen, but it was rote motion. He counterattacked, distracted, and defended viciously, but he never carried through. He'd had two different opportunities to lay Corvo open completely and simply turned away, blinking behind him in a convoluted attack when all he had to to was slash forward leave Corvo's guts spilled on the floor.

Somewhere behind them the oil from a whale lantern, knocked over minutes ago and left to bleed out on the floor, finally reached the flickering embers of a discarded cigarette. A gout of flame roared, sizzling and spitting, lighting up Daud's face in stark relief-

And Corvo _hated_ him, hated him like he hated Coldridge, like he hated the grim battered streets of Dunwall, the cesspit it had become in the grips of the plague after Jessamines death. Because Duad was a killer, Jessamines murderer, and yet he had the gall to look _so fucking resigned_. He was letting Corvo kill him, committing suicide without the decency of using his own fucking knife.

Corvo snarled and threw himself forward, knocking Daud's sword from his hand with a rough swipe, and following it up with a brutal punch to the face. Something crunched. Corvo didn't know it was Daud's nose or Corvo's fingers, and he didn't care. Daud stumbled back a step, blood pouring down his face, and even then he didn't meet Corvo's eyes, his gaze lingering somewhere off to the left.

Corvo stalked forward, sword in hand.  Daud's collar was damp with blood, splattered with drops that had run down his chin, slick against his fingers as he hauled him up by the front of his jacket and slammed him back into the wall. Not that it mattered. Corvo's hands were already soaked with Daud's blood before he grabbed him.

Daud wheezed, breath wet and ragged, hanging limply in his grasp. He looked as exhausted as Corvo felt, worn down and battered by the relentless whirl of bad, worse, and fucking awful that Dunwall had become. Corvo's blood burned in his veins, throbbing in his ears like a second heartbeat. And how fucking dare he, when it had been him that killed Jessamine and started all this, when it was his crime Corvo had spent months in Coldridge paying for and his fault Emily now lived in the attic of a worn down old pub, skittish and scared and all too grim for a girl of 12 years.

" _Fuck_ ." Corvo snarled, shoving Daud back into the wall once more. He held him there, pinned, and in that moment, breathless and burning with the sheer vitriol of his rage, he wanted to slit him open, put his sword right through his belly the way he had Jessamine as hear him gasp as she had gasped, mouth opening in a surprised 'oh' as her hands came down to touch the sword. A single moment and it would be over. It would be easy, so _fucking easy_ , to just end it.

Daud's eyes were closed, his head tilted back. Waiting.

Corvo couldn't look at him, so he didn't. He barely felt the sword slip from his hands, the clatter of metal on concrete a distant sound, like something heard through a dream. Corvo was tired. Corvo was so fucking _tired_.

Every since Jessamine, since Coldridge, he'd been fighting. Her death had crumbled the ground beneath his feet, throwing him into the abyss and Coldridge had only made it worse, grinding away at every happy moment, even good memory, until Corvo's last hand-hold was gone and he was sliding through the mud, clawing his way back up but still sinking sinking _sinking_ -

He'd been falling from fight to fight, trying to pull himself back up even as every drop of blood greased his way downwards. Emily had helped - seeing her alive, unharmed, had given him a hand-hold, a single piece of soil ground in the flood, but now Corvo felt like he was falling again.

He shuddered, fighting for each breath like a drowning man. The storm had been coming for months now, but Corvo had always held it at bay. One more day, he'd say, one more mission, and then it'll be over. Now the storm had caught up with them and there was nothing Corvo could but ride it out. His hands trembled and Corvo clenched them tighter, until the coarse material of Daud's jacket scraped like sandpaper against his skin.

Corvo's legs gave way beneath him. He collapsed to the ground, dragging Daud down with him, clutching him like he was the only sanctuary in the storm, the only solid rock in the midst of the roiling, raging ocean, solid and steady even as the world rocked and lurched around him, water blurring his vision. He shuddered and heaved and gasped, biting back noises until his throat burned with the force of it, face wet and warm with something other than blood.

Later - minutes, hours, did it even matter? - when his breath evened and the violent trembling subsided to a tired shiver, Corvo opened his eyes. He had fallen against Daud at some point and hadn't been shoved off, and now they sat there together, collapsed against each other.

His fingers were stiff and aching. Corvo pried them open one by one, released Daud’s jacket, now irreparably wrinkled, and leaned back, taking a deep breath. He untangled himself from Daud's leg and shuffled to the side, until he was side by side with Daud, his back pressed to the wall. He pressed his face into his hands, fingers tangling in the wild knots in his hair. Jessamine would have teased him about it to no end if she'd seen the state he was in, chivvying him alone until he took a long bath and brushing his hair when he finally emerged, tried and relaxed and significantly cleaner than when he'd gone in.

Corvo didn't look at Daud, but he could hear him. His breathing had eased slightly, but it was still a rough sound, somewhere between a wheeze and a sigh. At least two of his ribs were definitely broken, Corvo had felt them crunch when he'd kicked Daud in the chest, and more probably cracked or badly bruised.

Daud reached into his jacket, and it said something about the state Corvo was in that he couldn't even bring himself to react as Daud's hand emerged, something sliver glinted in the dim light. It could have been a knife, a gun, anything.  Daud could have killed him then and there and Corvo couldn't have stopped him.

It wasn't. The cigarette case clicked as it opened, is surface bent and beaten, and soon the scent of smoke rose between them. Corvo watched it rise, tiny trailing wisps of grey in the darkness of the warehouse, so small and fragile. A single breath of air would send it spiraling away, vanishing into the dim.

Corvo reached over, plucking the cigarette from between Daud's lips and took a long drag. There was blood on the end, soaked into the thin paper, but Corvo didn't mind. The rush of nicotine in his lungs was like an old friend, familiar and soothing, and yet it hurt as much as it healed, burning through him and leaving him feeling hollow inside. Mellow but ultimately empty.

"She asked me to spare you. Emily, that is." Corvo breathing out a cloud of smoke just to watch it rise. He didn't want to admit this, didn't even want to think about it, but he was tired. All the rage and anger and righteous fury was sliding away, leaving him bare and exposed and so fucking _exhausted_. All that was left was Corvo, battered and scarred and tired of all the fucking pretense, of people tip-toeing around him and tell him how awful he must feel.

Corvo took a deep drag and sighed, smoke rising and taking the last vestiges of his resolve with it."I hate you because you almost make me want to like you."

(Emily had told him about her time with the Whalers, those first days after Jessamine's death, snatched away by unfriendly hands to be delivered to even more gruesome prospects. They'd taken care of her, she'd said, even as she'd raged and cried and tried to take a knife to Daud the first time they were alone. Her voice had been so quiet, so tentative and conflicted, her face flickering in the dim candle-light, features soft in the dim of the night.

"They never hurt me. they made sure I had everything I could need, that no one so much as touched me, and-" She hesitated. "They were supposed to take me to the Pendeltons. To the Golden Cat..."

Emily looks at him, her relief palpabile. She doesn't need to say more. They both knew what could have happened, what _would_ have happened if Daud was slightly less the man he was, a single shred of decency still clinging to the vestiges of his cold dead heart. Corvo had emerged from Coldridge to find the Pendleton twins already dead and Emily in the safe custody of the Cunrows.

He will never say it aloud, but he is unspeakably grateful for it, that Daud spared Emily that fate.)

For the past months Corvo had been little more than a ghost, a dark shape flitting across ruined streets, appearing in the night to wreak destruction upon those that had wronged him. He'd been a fugitive, presumed dead, little more than a mask and a mark and a will to get justice - but even he had heard the rumors about the Whalers. Dunwall's dark underbelly was a sour place, old and grimy and set in its ways, and the sudden change of heart of ones of its most powerful factions had sent ripples through its murky waters and riled them up into a froth.

The Whalers had stopped taking jobs, they'd said, shifty eyed and skittish. They had dropped all their jobs without a single word of explanation, withdrawing into reclusion and disappeared entirely for almost a month, only to return again, picking up one job at a time. Petty theft, blackmail, espionage, a bit of arson - but not assassination. Never assassination. The most infamous band of assassins in all the Isles, and they hadn't killed a single man in almost seven months.

Maybe Daud really did regret Jessamine's death, maybe he really had repented, or maybe she was just the last drop of blood that set the seas to storm. Corvo didn't know which it was and he didn't much care. Whatever the case, Daud had changed. The man that stood before him was hollow eyed, defeated, crushed beneath the weight of his own conscience, if he had such a thing - nothing like the callous assassin that had watched over Jessamine's cooling corpse and smirked. " _Bodyguard_."

Corvo tilts up, watching the delicate lines of smoke coil upwards and disappear into the dim. Daud's head is bowed, one hand clutching at his broken ribs. He's still waiting for Corvo to end him, waiting for the kiss of the his blade. Good, Corvo thinks viciously. Let him wait, let him suffer the weight of his guilt like Corvo suffers Jessamine's death. Let him live with it for the rest of his life, as Crovo will, as Emily will.

"But you will live. Murderer." Corvo says finally. The words take a weight of his chest but they burn, oh how they burn in his throat. This is not forgiveness - neither of them will ever forget what Daud has done - but perhaps it could almost be called atonement. Daud will suffer for his crimes and Corvo will not stain his hands with blood again, as he has far too many times in recent months.

He stands without another word and doesn't look at Daud as he goes, leaving a trail of smoke in his wake, blood dripping to the grimy concrete floor with every step.


End file.
